Slices of life
by Jillie Rose
Summary: Response to the 100 themes challenge. 2: Love.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Do I own it? No, I don't. Never mind. I'm just playing in their sandpit a while.**

**This is my first response to the 100 themes challenge. Just because it sounded like something I couldn't pass up. It had 'challenge' in it, after all. I'm not doing stories on them all, just oneshots. I love oneshots about Ten and Rose. And Nine and Rose. And Doctor Who generally…**

**Introduction.**

**As introductions go, he felt this one had been quite explosive. **

'**Run!'**

**That would have been enough. Would have been all she needed. But he was hurting. His people were gone and he was reaching out.**

'**I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?'**

'**Rose.'**

'**Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!'**

**As introductions go, it was a setup. He knew, then. Almost knew: she couldn't be just another stupid ape, another face in the crowd. **

**And then she has the nerve to come chasing after him? After being attacked by living plastic? No. She was special. He knew it from the first word. Almost knew it. **

**He was there. She was there. And she didn't get it. No matter how plucky she was, she didn't get it.**

**Yeah. Keep lying.**

**He never got an ordinary introduction though. It wasn't the way things worked. He never got the 'Oh, a friend of John? So nice to meet you.' Instead he got quizzed about his name, 'The Doctor? Doctor Who?' or told to keep his hands off someone's daughter/cousin/mother/sister/brother, on occasion. Rose always did find that hilarious, but Captain Jack was not one for letting a good-looking sentient being escape.**

**There was never a good introduction for the Doctor. Most often it would end for the other person in a bloody death, and the only reply would be 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' Because after all that, what else could you say?**

**He always lived up to his introductions. Explosive, fey almost, with a desperate kind of charm that a certain kind of woman (and a certain kind of man) found impossible to resist.**

**But there came the heart of it: just as there was always an introduction, there was always a goodbye too. Too often for him the 'till death do us part' area was very swift in arriving. **

**He was The Oncoming Storm, the bringer of death, angst and a leather coat. It hadn't always been this way. **

**But this was one introduction he would never forget.**

'**Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life.'**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Usual disclaimers apply!**

**2. Love**

**Love hurt. For him, love hurt more than anyone on earth could imagine. To love and then to lose: well, that was part of life. But no one should have to bury a child. It wasn't right. Many on earth knew that too. The gut-twisting, soul-tearing agony that came with seeing the life you helped to create…gone.**

**He had kids, once. He had a wife, a family, a cell around him of those like him. And now, without even being able to say goodbye, he was cursed to wander alone. Merely remembering. The love of his wife. The hugs of his children. The horrors he had seen. The fall of Arcadia. Lonely. So lonely.**

**But not quite alone. He had loved them. Loved all those who had strayed across his path. He had seen them becoming. Becoming that which they were meant to be. Becoming heroes, and leaders.**

**Becoming…things they should not have been. Becoming**

**And maybe that was the saddest thing. He couldn't become. He was what he was. He stayed, the same now as ever. With a different face. But he knew how to love. **

**Didn't he?**

And she knew how to love him back. And in the depths of the pit, he loved her.

**And she knew.**

'**Tell Rose…' he had begun, to no avail. Why?**

'**She knows.'**

**Three simple words were all that he could not give. The earth, the galaxy, the universe? No problem, but those three words…one word even, because he could say 'I' and 'you'. **

'**Love' though. 'Love' evaded him and he knew why, and maybe deep down she knew too. But love will bloom with no words to speak. And in the light its counsel keep.**

**He remembered Sarah Jane. He remembered loving her, and her leaving. She had to leave, didn't she? Had to. 'I can't do this any more.'**

**They had loved each other. Not in the sappy holding-hands-in-the-park kissy-kissy way, but in the way that counts. **

**  
The way a lover loves. The way a mother loves. The way a father loves. That hot, bittersweet realisation which accompanies the prickling of all your senses (and the Doctor had far more than the usual five) and the twisting of your stomach that says, 'I would fight fire for you, fight ice for you, die for you without so much as a second of regret because you are mine. And I am yours.'**

**Love hurt. It was so beautiful…and so terrible. And now he was alone again, and that couldn't be right. She was his anchor, his compassion, his compass.**

The Doctor needs his Companions as much as they need him.

**And he loved them all.**

He just wasn't meant to fall in love with them.

**And now it was too late.**


End file.
